Is Taylor Swift sending a not-so-subtle message to Kim Kardashian on her new album?
Originally appeared on E! Online
For Taylor Swift, some bad blood is harder to bury.
It's a fact only proven with the release of her 11th — and a surprise double — album "The Tortured Poets Department," in which the Grammy winner seems to take a thinly-veiled jab at Kim Kardashian, with whom Swift has had a longstanding feud.
The jab comes in the form of a track on part two of TTPD titled "thanK you aIMee." And yes, the capitalized letters do indeed spell out the name KIM. What follows is an allegorical retelling of Swift and Kardashian's history in the form of Swift versus a high school bully.
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E! News has reached out to reps for both for comment but has not heard back.
"When I picture my hometown / There's a bronze spray-tanned statue of you," Swift sings in the first verse. "And a plaque underneath it / That threatens to push me down the stairs, at our school."
And in the second verse, Swift slams the headlines that she alleges Kardashian caused with her actions — such as when she shared footage of the infamous 2016 phone call between Swift and Kanye West — while noting the discrepancy in their career growth at the time.
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"And it wasn't a fair fight, or a clean kill / Each time that Aimee stomped across my gravе," she sings. "And then she wrote hеadlines / In the local paper, laughing at each baby step I'd take."
In December, Swift spoke to her mental health during the public fallout between her, Kardashian and West. As she told TIME, "You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar. That took me down psychologically to a place I've never been before."
The song's lyrics grow progressively more cutting — with lines such as "Everyone knows that my mother is a saintly woman / But she used to say she wished that you were dead" — before Swift takes perhaps her greatest swing at the SKIMS founder.
While noting that Kardashian has "perhaps reframed" their history in her mind, Swift counters that she "doesn't think she's changed much," before spelling out her reason for penning the song.
"And so I changed your name, and any real defining clues," she sings in the bridge. "And one day, your kid comes home singin' / A song that only us two is gonna know is about you."
But though "thanK you aIMee" spends much of its lyrics describing the adversity "Aimee" put Swift up against, the "Midnights" artist also acknowledges the ways in which it forced her to grow — hinting at the larger legacy she's built.
"All that time you were throwin' punches, I was buildin' somethin'," she sings in the chorus, at the end adding, "And our town, it looks so small, from way up here / Screamed "Thank you, Aimee" to the night sky, and the stars are stunnin' / 'Cause I can't forget the way you made me heal."
